PATRIOTS: It's a time for evaluation by Brady

Glen Farley The Enterprise @GFarley_ent

Wednesday

Nov 14, 2018 at 5:08 PMNov 14, 2018 at 5:52 PM

Tom Brady says the bye week gives him time to look at the errors he's made over the first 10 weeks of the season. The veteran quarterback has had his struggles, currently rated the 16th-best passer in the NFL.

FOXBORO – He finds himself in unfamiliar territory.

Ten games into the season, Tom Brady ranks a below-average 18th in the NFL in completion percentage, a middling 16th in the league in passer rating, trailing pedestrian quarterbacks such as Ryan Fitzpatrick of Tampa Bay and Chicago’s Mitchell Trubisky in both departments, not all that far ahead of the likes of Eli Manning of the New York Giants and Washington’s Alex Smith in the latter.

Yes, the player many refer to as the GOAT finds himself keeping company with the commoners.

Now, the team’s bye week, with no game to be played until Nov. 25 against the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium, is a time for self-evaluation.

“All quarterbacks are a little bit different, so I certainly have a routine I would never give away,” Brady said Wednesday. “But I’m trying to just evaluate the different physical errors, mental errors, and sometimes there’s one, sometimes there’s none, sometimes there’s both, and the less errors you can make the better. It could be a read, it could be a decision, it could be a throw. Ultimately, it’s just trying to be productive, to score points to help us win.”

Ten games into the season, Brady has completed 242-of-371 passes (65.2 percent) for 2,748 yards and 17 touchdowns with seven interceptions for a passer rating of 94.7. His most recent performance was poor, 21 for 41 (51.2 percent) for 254 yards with neither a touchdown nor an interception for a passer rating of 70.6 in a game in which he locked in on receivers, throwing to wideouts Julian Edelman and Josh Gordon 12 times each, to running back James White on eight occasions, to everyone else (tight ends Jacob Hollister and Dwayne Allen, wide receiver Phillip Dorsett and Chris Hogan) a collective five times.

Thumbs up for the fact that after throwing seven interceptions through the Patriots’ first seven games he hasn’t thrown any in the last three. Thumbs down for the fact that after throwing 16 touchdown passes through those first seven games he’s thrown only one in the last three.

Granted, there have been outlying circumstances – for one reason or another, offensive weapons like Edelman (a four-game suspension from the league), tight end Rob Gronkowski (missed three games due to injury) and running back Sony Michel (also sidelined three games due to injury) and linemen Marcus Cannon (he’s also missed three games due to injury) and Shaq Mason (out two games due to injury) have all missed time and Gordon was an in-season addition who’s had to be worked into the system.

“There’s been a lot of moving parts this year for one reason or another with the receivers, tight ends, running backs, a little bit with the o-line, not so much with the quarterback position,” said Brady. “But I think that’s all part of what we’re trying to do.

“We’ve got to get out there and practice together and that transitions. If you practice well, you can gain a lot of confidence and ultimately you go out and you play confidently because you can play aggressively knowing what the other guys are doing. We just haven’t had, I would say, that overall consistency and the ability to practice together. That’s not an excuse. Every team goes through that. A lot of teams deal with injuries and moving parts and bringing different people in. That’s just part of football. We’re trying to adjust and adapt like everyone else.

“Some weeks it’s been better than others,” said Brady, “but we’re just trying to grind our way through it and I think the important part is what we’ve always realized is we’re going to learn as we go and you’re always judged over the course of 16 weeks. Not four games or the first eight games or the first 12 games. It’s really a long season and you’ve got to be playing your best at the end of the year and that’s what we’re coming upon. It’s a lot of urgency our coaches put on us to be able to do that and we’ll see what we do. I think it’s one thing to say it, it’s another to go do it. I think we all have a great intention to go out there and do it.”

While the offense has had its moments – the team put up 38 points or more in each game over a four-week stretch with Miami and Indianapolis (38 both times), Kansas City (43) and Chicago (38 again) as part of the six-game winning streak that’s gotten them to 7-3 and a two-game lead over the Dolphins in the AFC East – it’s also struggled at other times, scoring just a total of 40 points in the three losses it’s suffered to Jacksonville (20), Detroit and Tennessee (10 each).

And, through it all, there’s no denying the fact that just one year removed from his third MVP award Brady’s play at the age of 41 has slid.

But while the numbers say that Brady hasn’t been his old self, the 19-year veteran insists the film shows otherwise.

“I study my mechanics every day,” said Brady, “so I feel like I look like my normal self out there.”

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